Friday, 26 April 2013

Video Footage Of Air-To-Air Missiles Being Used As Surface-To-Surface Missiles In Syria

This rather remarkable video filmed near Qatinah, Homs, sent to me by Mads Dahl, shows a unique example of an air-to-air missile being used as a surface-to-surface missile

In the video we see a K-13 variant missile, a Soviet copy of the US Sidewinder missile, being prepared for ground launch, without the seeker and guidance sections at the end of the missile. Here's an example of one of the variants

The location of the launch is interesting, as it appears to be near Dabaa air-base, which recently was at least partly overrun, with large amounts of equipment captured, including the same type of missile shown in the video. It would seem that the opposition fighters in that area have decided to make the most of these missiles, which are designed for air-to-air combat, by building a DIY launcher to fire them. As you can imagine, they've pretty no way to aim these, or is it certain the warheads will detonate correctly, so whether this is a one off experiment or something they'll use more regularly is unclear at the moment.